The Trouble With “Elevated Horror”

Starting some time in the last decade or so, we’ve all run into the dreaded phrase “elevated horror.” Sometimes it meant A24. Sometimes it meant horror movies too-obvious in their treatment of grief, trauma, race, motherhood, or family dysfunction. Sometimes it just meant horror movies that critics decided to gush about after looking down on horror for … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

For fifty years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has endured as a midnight ritual. The first thing any fan or critic wants to talk about is the cult following and audience participation elements: the costumes, callbacks, inside jokes, the flying props. And that’s all good fun. But the carnivalesque cult following around the film often impedes the more interesting critical questions we can ask. After all, what is the text of Rocky Horror actually about? And how does that relate to its cult elements or the cultural situation we live in today?My new video essay argues that underneath the fishnets and the floor show, Rocky Horror is a timeless story about sexual politics; specifically, about the cycle of radicalism and reaction that drives so much cultural history.Rocky Horror is about liberation. But it’s also about the price of that “absolute pleasure: the backlash, the violence, the collapse. It’s like a microcosm of the sociopolitical pattern we keep living through, even as we navigate the present transition from the high woke era to the so-called vibe shift. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Sweet Sweet Suffering: A Three-Part Video Essay on Hellraiser! In part one, I argue Hellraiser is not about demons. It's about desire, and best understood as mapping to a specific theory of desire from Jacques Lacan, one of the twentieth century’s most provocative and influential thinkers.Over three video essays, I'll go deep into the Hellraiser franchise — not just as horror films, but as a surprisingly coherent philosophical argument about what it means to be a human being.Each part focuses on a different entry (parts 1, 2, and 4). (I skip Hell on Earth because I don’t have anything interesting to say about that one.) In my reading, Hellraiser, Hellbound, and Bloodline each elaborates its own Lacanian concept.Hellraiser is about desire.Hellbound is about the Real.Bloodline is about the role of fantasy.The first talks about desire as a certain paradox: what happens when you actually get what you want? The second descends into the psychological system that produces desire. The third reveals the fragile illusion that allows us to live with desire at all. The framework is Lacanian psychoanalysis — one of the twentieth century's most challenging and rewarding bodies of thought. But no prior knowledge required. If you love Hellraiser and want to go deeper, this is for you. And if you've always been curious about Lacan but didn't know where to start, it turns out Hellraiser is a fantastic entry point. 🧠Takes this as an opportunity to revisit one of the most interesting horror films of all time. Part two, covering Hellbound, drops in two weeks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

This is one of the last videos I’ve had in the vault from my Youtube days. It started as a silly idea for a kind of audacious clickbait project. I didn’t realize how wildly time-consuming it’d end up being. And it was kind of a maddening project too. Many times along the way, I felt uncomfortably deranged for even attempting such an obscene exercise. But it ended up being good practice for me as a video editor, since it involved wrangling and sequencing a huge number of clips in specific order. I can’t say I’m necessarily proud of making this. But I did make it, so here it is for your sick enjoyment. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

In this audio-only episode, I’m joined again by Cynthia to count down the best horror movies of 2025. The conversation is 100% spoiler free—and I think also free of pretentious jargon! WDYT - was 2024 or 2025 a better year for horror? Many are asking. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

This is part two of a video series analyzing Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. You can catch up on part one here, or you can jump right into this one.Part one focused on Clover’s classic reading of the slasher film and her coining of the term Final Girl. Part two explores so-called “occult horror,” which includes ghosts, demonic possession, black magic, and the like. Clover’s take on occult horror is a useful complement to her analysis of slasher films, exploring the way male-driven arcs reflect the same underlying tendency we see in the female-driven spectacle of slasher films. These two currents defined horror movies in the 1970s and 80s, and Clover argues that both draw on the same underlying anxiety: an unconscious fear the two sexes are one. 0:00 - introduction1:45 - Don’t Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg 1973)2:32 - white science and black magic3:27 - the too-open female vs. the too-closed male4:40 - sex in slasher films vs. reproduction in occult horror films5:54 - The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin 1973)7:20 - Witchboard (dir. Kevin Tenney 1986)9:44 - Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski 1981)10:40 - summary and critique of Carol Clover’s analysis14:08 - conclusion - slashers comparedI started this project a while back now, and do plan on finishing it out with two more installments. For a change of pace, the next installment will focus on Clover’s chapter on rape revenge films. You can expect a content warning! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

Russ Meyer once claimed that his films dealt in female archetypes that went “beyond women.” This video attempts to understand what he meant by that.I’m reposting this one from the Gutter Studies vault in honor of Tura Satana’s birthday last week. Tura is best remembered today as the star of Faster Pussycat, and she remains an icon in exploitation film history.This was actually the very first video essay I did as part of the Gutter Studies project. I’ve taken the opportunity to clean it up a bit, but it’s overall the same video. I’d love to do more videos on Russ Meyer. He was definitely my gateway to exploitation film, and I’ve seen just about every one of his movies. Let me know in comments, email, messages if you’d like to see more Russ Meyer on here. In particular, I’d love to do a deep dive on his roughie masterpiece Lorna (1964) and to revisit his big-budget Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Looking back, he didn’t always have the most consistent career, but when he was interesting he was interesting.In the meantime, check out my Letterboxd list: Lust and Profit: Russ Meyer ranked.SourcesDean DeFino - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Cultographies) Jimmy McDonough - Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

To honor the passing of Pope Francis, I’m reposting a nunsploitation video I did back in my Youtube days. Every if you followed my work back then, it’s possible you haven’t seen this one. I have a strong suspicion that this is the video that got my channel banned. It was starting to blow up for a day or two before the ban.The discussion here is a sequel to the video I did providing an overview of the history and elements of nunsploitation generally, which was also paired with a thorough analysis of Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971). Russell’s film remains the foundational masterpiece, but these four films provide a panoramic view of what nunsploitation became throughout the 1970s: a complex exploitation subgenre with fascination variations thematically, geographically, and stylistically.Timestamps0:00 - introduction 0:34 - Story of a Cloistered Nun (1973)5:19 -Satanic Pandemonium (1975)10:08 - Alucarda (1977)15:08 - Killer Nun (1979)Here I refer to these four as the “best” nunsploitation films alongside The Devils, but in retrospect I feel like I’m leaving an important one out: Bruno Mattei’s The True Story of the Nun of Monza (1980). That’s another very important one that I’ve come to appreciate greatly. You can be sure that Monza will be featured in my next video on nunsploitation, which will also analyze the nunsploitation-horror movie Mattei filmed concurrently using the same sets and cast: The Other Hell (1981). Stay tuned! But before that, we’ll return to the career of Jean Rollin to finish out the last two chapters of our five-part Voluptuous Melancholy series. Catch up on our Rollin series here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to VOLUPTUOUS MELANCHOLIA: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE FILMS OF JEAN ROLLIN! Our first installment provides a thorough introduction to Jean Rollin, and is appropriate for both beginners and those already familiar with Rollin’s work. The video introduces some biographical background on Rollin, as well as a discussion of the French film culture that he emerged from in the 1960s. As we’ll see, a confluence of influences resulted in his distinctive style, which we can identify with the term poetic surrealism. Lastly, the video provides some tips and caveats on Rollin’s work. Nobody made films like Rollin, before or since, and it’s best to understand that going in.Timesamps: 0:00 - introduction and personal note 2:09 - biographical background 3:15 - French New Wave, poetic realism, and surrealism 6:35 - is it horror?7:45 - contextualizing the erotic dimension9:10 - narrative style, or lack thereof9:54 - emotional viewing and interpretation This was a challenging series to research and assemble, not least because of the inherently enigmatic and remote nature of Rollin’s work. His movies are sometimes challenging, and it can be even harder to write about them, let alone understand. The series is a humble attempt at doing all of the above, and I hope you’ll join me and offer your own perspectives on this remarkable, odd, fraught, and painfully unique filmmaker. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu (2024) inspired a strongly negative reaction in me. But it was a reaction that arose from a tangle of mixed feelings. I’ve continued to circle and reconsider my take on the movie—not only because my network of friends and amateur critics largely seem to have enjoyed it—but also because of the particular subject matter and style on display. In many ways, Nosferatu is not only the kind of movie I could see myself making; it’s the movie I’d be worried that I’d make: something that others with shared sensibilities would clock as phony, pseudo-intellectual, and out of its depth.I understand what people are responding to in Nosferatu, and it brings me no pleasure to criticize it so harshly. For a while, I questioned whether I should even do the video, as I’d much rather spent time studying work that I find interesting and enjoyable. It’s actually not much fun explaining what you don’t like about something.I hope the criticisms I’ve offered will come across as minimally thoughtful and respectful, even where I refrain from pulling punches.Thanks for reading GUTTER STUDIES! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe